THATCHER'S SON PLEADS GUILTY IN BOTCHED COUP

The son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admitted Thursday to a role in helping finance a thwarted coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea last year and agreed to pay a half-million dollar fine to avoid jail time.

Mark Thatcher, 51, who lives outside Cape Town, pleaded guilty to violating South Africa's tough anti-mercenary laws and, in a plea bargain, was allowed to avoid a five-year jail term in exchange for paying a fine. The deal reached Thursday also allows him to leave South Africa to rejoin his American wife and two children, who returned to the United States after Thatcher's arrest at their posh home in August.

"There is no price too high for me to be reunited with my family, and I am sure all of you who are husbands and fathers would agree with that," an anxious-looking Thatcher said after making his plea.

Thatcher later checked in for a flight out of South Africa.

His lawyers insisted in a legal statement that Thatcher "was not charged with any involvement in the attempted coup d'etat in Equatorial Guinea," a tiny oil-rich Central African dictatorship sandwiched between Cameroon and Gabon. Instead, the wealthy businessman simply financed "the charter of a helicopter in circumstances where he should have exercised more caution," the statement read.

Thatcher, the former British prime minister's only son, was arrested in August by South African authorities, who accused him of spending $274,000 to charter a helicopter for use in Equatorial Guinea, reportedly as part of an alleged coup attempt led by Simon Mann. Mann is a noted former British special forces officer and was a neighbor of Thatcher in Cape Town. Thatcher has insisted the helicopter was to be used in an air ambulance service.

Mann was arrested in March 2004 in Harare, Zimbabwe, as he and two associates waited to meet a chartered plane arriving from South Africa with 64 alleged mercenaries on board and to load a shipment of weapons bought in Zimbabwe.

Mann insisted the group, most former South African soldiers, were headed to Congo to provide security at a diamond mine. But Zimbabwean authorities, tipped off by South Africa's government, accused the men of being mercenaries on their way to overthrow Equatorial Guinea's government and seize a share of the repressive nation's oil wealth.

Mann was subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison in Harare on charges of illegally buying weapons, a sentence reduced this week in a high court review to four years.

Thatcher also faces charges in Equatorial Guinea, where another 19 alleged members of the coup plot, accused of being part of an advance ground team, remain on trial. A 20th member of the group died last year in Black Beach Prison, which is considered to have some of the most deplorable conditions in Africa. Rights groups attributed his death to torture; the government blames cerebral malaria.